Young Marmalade glows in the dark

PETERBOROUGH-BASED insurer Young Marmalade can lighten up the world of young drivers by not penalising them for night time driving.

Among insurance companies which have developed policies for young drivers that utilise telematics to assess how a car is being driven, the firm’s Intelligent Marmalade scheme is the only one that does not effectively bump up costs for driving in the dark.

This creates problems for youngsters trying to find work in an increasingly desperate employment situation.

“There are more than a million young people unemployed and they are being forced to depend on part-time work that is often at unsociable hours,” said Nigel Lacy, the director of marketing at Young Marmalade.

“We launched our telematicsbased Intelligent Marmalade

JOHN KRALEVICH scheme several months ago and an average score of 97 per cent indicates how safely young people are driving their vehicles.

“Contrary to the stance taken by other companies, we have found that young people actually drive safer at night and so why should we hamper their employment prospects?”

The city firm took a random sample of drivers currently using Intelligent Marmalade and studied 10 journeys from each, five in the day time and five at night time, between March 1 and April 30, and each over two miles.

Mr Lacy said: “The results show that over 80 per cent of the sampled drivers drove better at night compared to the day. In this sample, the average score for the night time journeys was 95.78 per cent against 92.63 per cent in the day time.” Apart from Intelligent Marmalade, all other telematicsbased insurance schemes either impose curfews on young drivers or weight policies

against night time driving.

Intelligent Marmalade - one of the originators of the telematics market - installs an on-board Orange Box to access the ABCS of driving - acceleration, braking, cornering and speed.

Young drivers can review their driving skills online and correct any high risk manoeuvres. If the driver repeatedly transgresses, the insurers will intervene, but the scheme’s average score of 97 per cent is evidence to the concentration that driving with an Orange Box instils in young motorists.

“The scheme has proven so successful that premiums have been held well below market rates, and are competitive against other telematics- based insurers, even more so if night time driving is taken into account,” added Mr Lacy.

driver safety: Nigel Lacy, of Young Marmalade, explains how young people drove safer at night than during the day.